


Last Action (anti)Hero

by Matarreyes



Series: Last Action (anti)Hero [1]
Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: FIx It, Gen, Ward meets his creators, You are welcome, he is about as impressed as we all are, this time with a healthy dose of meta, yes another one
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-07
Updated: 2016-01-07
Packaged: 2018-05-12 07:31:57
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,238
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5657863
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Matarreyes/pseuds/Matarreyes
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He was born a puppet and he died a puppet, his friends and enemies all simple playthings in hands of random TV Gods - a twist that no one in the world's best spy agency could ever imagine... </p><p>But now he knows, he tells himself. And knowledge is power.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Last Action (anti)Hero

**Author's Note:**

> Title inspired by the 1993 action comedy about a movie character coming to our world and being appaled at the fact that his (very real from his POV and actually not at all rosy) life had been but a cheap drama. In addition to unending oneliners, it actually managed to provide relevant commentary on the gruesome psychological mistreatment of fictional characters. 
> 
> (Hey AOS writers? If even Schwarzenegger action flicks frown on your writing ethics, you're officially the dirt at the bottom of Holywood's barrel. Cheers!)

He dies alone on a hostile deserted planet, the whisper of blue sand filling his ears. He comes back amidst a busy crowd. The eerie sounds of his own labored breathing, of the creature crawling toward him are gone. He is standing in the middle of a busy mall. Jingly Christmas songs and elevator doors opening and closing fill his senses... And there is also something more. A persistent sound, some kind of ticking that's neither truly regular nor completely arrhythmic. It's not coming from the mall's speakers, or from the crowd. If Ward had to place it, he'd say that it's coming from himself, and is stuck at the back of his mind.

He has no time for vague delusions, though. He knows he died, and doesn't know anything else. He does what every spy in an unsecured uncertain situation does automatically - he goes underground. Leaves the centric mall. Holes himself up in a dingy motel in the suburbs. Several days later, the fact that he's come to back to life in the middle of Los Angeles of all places would more bells, but for now all he knows is that he's a wanted man, and his first instinct doesn't involve being transcendent.

The dropbox he has in the area is empty, which is very strange, but stranger things have happened quite recently. He steals a car, comes by some cash and a fake driving license, gets a room. The ticking sound is there through it all. It's just been a couple of hours since Ward first heard it, and yet it seems strangely familiar. Like it's been there for the entirety of his life, but he's only now become aware of its presence. It's lulling and quiet and soothing, not at really unpleasant in itself. Still, it makes his skin crawl. 

It doesn't take him long to figure out that, however similar, the world where he's woken up isn't the one he knows. Forget the safehouses he remembers perfecting, that aren't there now - the Avengers don't exist. There isn't a Stark Industries, there aren't any supersoldiers, aliens or demigods. People can't fly and nobody has powers. There is a United Nations, a Interpol, all kind of police. There isn't a SHIELD, though. And not because it's been destroyed by big bad Hydra, no. There's never been a SHIELD. 

A lesser person would be freaked out by what is starting to look a lot like an alternative universe, but he's Grant Ward, best since Romanoff (there's never been a Romanoff). He's been a SHIELD agent and a Hydra spy, he's faced down Gifted, Inhumans and all kinds of unlikely threats. Coming back to life on a different version of Earth isn't even in Ward's top three Weird Things of the Year list. If anything, this world makes more sense than the one Ward used to know had, at least where it concerns thaw enforcement. 

It also feels brighter, more orderly, way less violence driven. Ward has only been here for less than a day, and he already is quite sure that, were he to wave a gun around, land a jet near populated areas or randomly assault someone in a jewelry store, there would be immediate consequences. Police would take notice of unlawful deeds. Foreign countries would protest invasion of their sovereign borders. All these are weird concepts to him after years working for SHIELD and later watching people prance around the world following Coulson's lead, yet they make perfect sense now that he sees them in action. 

The ticking at the back of his mind gets louder when he thinks like that, to the point of becoming truly annoying. The headache it gives him becomes so bad after a while that he's driven to bed despite the instability of his current situation. 

He pays for better Internet access the next morning, engages his analytical training and turns off his emotions, and for the next 48 hours he dedicates himself to learning as much as he can about his present world. The turning off of his emotions is a good thing. It prevents him from going into shock several times. The first one, when he learns that despite there being an equivalent to almost everything and everyone, he specifically can't find any person related to him in any kind of way. There isn't a Coulson, a Garrett, a Kara, a Gideon Malick. These are SHIELD or Hydra related people, though, so it makes partial sense. He doesn't search for Skye, but he remembers that Skye has superpowers and since they don't exist here, he feels a pang of worry he does his best to quell. There are worse things to worry about right now. His entire family never existed here, and they are normal humans - if one wants to define them as humans anyway. There isn't a Grant Douglas Ward either, of course, and he decides this is a good thing. Somehow, coming face to face with an alternative version of himself seems wildly unappealing.

The second time shock almost engulfs him is when he finally finds SHIELD. It does exist here, after all. It's just that it is not really... real. It's a TV show. Just that. A low key, "kinda there" television series that describe the comings and goings of all these superpowered people this world lacks. All these people Ward knows. He finally finds a Coulson. A Skye. A May. A Fitz, a Simmons. Everyone he has been missing, every technological advancement he'd used, every fancily-abbreviated agency he worked for or against, is on that show. It kind of makes him laugh, honestly. SHIELD's one defining characteristic has always been its self importance and its obsession with its own relevance. To witness a world doing perfectly fine (better, actually) without the agency is pricelessly funny.

He stops laughing once he finds himself. Unsurprisingly, there is a Grant Ward character in the above mentioned weekly scifi drama. Except it's not "a" Grant Ward, a man with his name and face sharing a similar background. It's him. Exactly him. Down to the tiniest, most intimate details. Down to his exact clothes worn and changed at the exact moment he remembers doing it. Down to his scars, and the precise ways he acquired them all. Down to his conversations with Christian and Thomas and Malick and Kara when there weren't any witnesses. Down to the way the Ward-character has died several days ago on screen. 

He takes it all in, goes to the bathroom somewhat shakil and. takes a long shower. Breathes deeply and rhythmically, until he's in control of his body once again. When he's back in the room and sees the computer screen again, he still throws up. 

He goes for a 2 hours long run and waits for the first episodes load. Whatever the cost, he's getting to the bottom of this. It's so weird, to watch all the things that happened to him unfold again on the small screen. It's even weirder to learn what his friends, enemies, coworkers, bosses, said and did at the time behind his back. He feels a bit like a voyager, but this is the beauty (or the horror) of the omnipresent third person. None of them are apparently real people anyway. He'd laugh, but for the goddamn ticking. It makes so much sense that Ward is able to hear it how, when he never could before. It's so terrifyingly obvious... Still, he can't put his finger on it. Not yet, anyhow. There is a lot left to learn, a lot to figure out.

He sees May reveal their intimate relationship to Coulson on a whim and Coulson give her a pat on the back, and remembers the man threatening him with ignominious demotion for the same offense. He sees Coulson concernedly reach out to her after the Lorelei fiasco and remembers telling himself he should be relieved when it became clear everybody was going to reach out to him . May dumping him helped him hide the unwanted marks the Asgardian goddess left on his body. He thought his companions wanted to spare him facing all the shame. Turns out, they figured he'd either wanted it, deserved it or simply have forgotten it.

He sees the many times they talk about him like he isn't a living breathing person while he's being held in an underground soundproof cage and remembers the weeks he'd spent wondering how he could start proving - not even that he's sorry - simply that he can still be useful to them. He listens to the conversations Coulson has with Christian and remembers... Remembers the paralyzing fear, mostly, and the firm conviction that the transfer must be just an act. He knows now that it wasn't, and he's known for a while that the two had talked about him, but to witness their cordiality and hearing Coulson working in several jokes makes him turn the "episode" off and go out for a walk again.

It occurs to him that the biggest cruelty isn't the fact that his entire life had been just a serialized script, but the fact that he was made believe that he could change one word of it. He'd begged not to be sent away, something he hadn't done since his childhood, on the off chance it would make a difference. He manages to waddle through several more hours of the so-called entertainment, but then he sees May joking about Kara's face.

He stops the video and drinks himself to sleep. Wanders around the city aimlessly when he wakes. This world is brighter than he one he knows. Even at night, the colors are clearer. Prettier. Lighter. It feels safe. Safer than anything he had known. People go about their business, live their chosen lives, make decisions for themselves, get what they deserve. He thinks about how he'd spent his life thinking he was doing the same thing, when in reality he's been fighting, hoping, bargaining with an all powerful, whimsical, evil power. One that dictated each one of his steps and whose existence he couldn't even fandom. One that fed off his misfortunes, fears, nightmares and hopes and used them for nightly entertainment. One one that didn't hesitate to twist his psyche, pervert his goals, poison his actions and words until they lost all their sense. 

He could never make sense of his own life, and the constant trying and failing and people telling him he never actually tried had driven him crazy in the end. No wonder he could never right himself, no matter how hard he tried. He had been randomly chosen to be the pariah, the monster people would concentrate hatred on. His own feelings, experiences, hopes had never mattered. 

He was born a puppet and he died a puppet, his friends and enemies all simple playthings in hands of random evil Gods, and no one in the supposedly most advanced spy agency could ever imagine it... Except that now he knows, he tells himself. And knowledge is power. The ticking at the back of his mind becomes impossibly loud when he thinks like this. By now, he welcomes it. He knows that the louder and more unbearable it gets, the closer he's coming to his answer.

The denial phase is over. Having learned the episodes by heart, Ward dives head first into the behind the scenes part. He's still calling them gods inside his head, but he knows they aren't gods. They are just people randomly given a power they didn't earn, didn't deserve, didn't respect... He wonders if they even understood the full extension of said power, and what exactly they were doing exercising it week after week after week. 

It's a unique experience, to learn about one's creators. If he's the show's monster, they are his Victor Frankenstein, except the good doctor had the decency to feel shame toward himself and certain - if reluctant and horrified - responsibility toward the unfortunate creature. Ward finds smiling faces and grandiose interviews. He stares at the photos and the ticking in his brain goes crazy, but he doesn't look away no matter how difficult it becomes. These people have created him. Have given him childhood memories about unending torture, had stacked the cards in such a way that he was forced to live in infinite fright from the most young age. Had kept scarring him over and over and refused him every opportunity to heal. Or worse yet - had given him glimpses of hope and so-called "chances" of turning his life around and then had gleefully and hatefully destroyed everything that he had hoped for. For nothing, really. No good reason at all.

(It's terrifying, how much they resemble Christian in this... They tailored Christian to skit their needs just as they did everyone else, so maybe he's the character they decided to infuse with their own morals and perspective). 

The show isn't a good drama. It doesn't even have a message in itself, hopeful or otherwise. SHIELD beats up some baddies, and in the process creates some stronger baddies, who then must be beaten up as well. Rinse and repeat. Nothing more happens. Why Ward had to go through an abusive childhood, a 5 years long indoctrination by Garrett, several suicide attempts and end up being universally hated by absolutely everyone just so that his mangled dead body could be used by the next baddie of turn is completely beyond him. Wouldn't his death make for a better, stronger drama if someone in the TV world cared about him? Wouldn't his character bring in more ratings if he actually made sense? Watching all episodes together, it feels like story being told doesn't exist. There is no point to anything. 

The next morning finds him scouting the access to the production offices. There isn't a Grant Douglas Ward in this (real) word, but there is a perfect lookalike - the series' actor. He's a smiling, endlessly positive guy. Ward sees him once, and doesn't come back on that day. He feels a little jealous, and as protective as he used to feel about Thomas. Playing the show's emotional punching bad has brought the guy enough grief, he'd found out. Ward fervently hopes he soon gets a better gig than playing his dead-but-possessed body.

It's not him he wants to have words with, anyway. 

Security is tight, but he is a goddamn spy and all these people have truly no idea how a spy acts and what he can accomplish. They haven't seen one or talked to one in their lives. Then again, they hadn't been shot, tortured, kidnapped either. Hadn't spent 5 years fending for themselves in the woods. Hadn't been driven to the point where they'd want to set their abusive family on fire. Ward doesn't wish they had. He'd never wish his life on anyone, and he isn't so naive as to think that experiencing something is a prerequisite to be able to write well about it. Of course not. 

The prerequisite to good writing is empathy.

He finds his way inside on his first try, and walks up to his marks while smiling happily.

"Do you have a sec? There's a thing regarding the overarching script I need to clear up."

The woman smiles automatically, not quite listening to him. The men radiate the same kind of pasted-on all purpose cordiality. 

"We've been over this already," the older of the two men says. "Your contract is perfectly safe till May, and we'll lose the deathly makeup starting next episode. Even a possessed dead body should be easy to look at, after all."

"I'm not him," Ward says, still grinning slightly. They are all alone right now, and nobody will come in some time. If there is one thing that works in this production, it's the secrecy. 

It takes several minutes for them to get up with the program, but when they do they are terribly excited. Why wouldn't they be? They haven't done anything wrong. In their minds, Ward being there in the flesh is testimony to their artistry. They truly think that puppets becoming real boys is cute. 

"You are exactly like we wrote you!" They wonder while touching him, patting him without asking permission first, circling him, admiring him like he's a prize. 

"I wouldn't know... Am I? That's cool, I guess?" 

An actor cannot become a real spy, but any spy is bound to be a very good actor. He's being careful to not appear threatening. Adoring, hopeful, a little bit dependent - yes. He's still theirs in a way. The maddening clicking right under his skull is an inescapable reminder of this unpleasant fact. 

"Amazing! How is this possible?!"

"One minute, I was dying, and another I was here." They nod along and still look happy, unable to even imagine that Ward could resent his overly gruesome, terrible death. "I have no clue what happened in between."

This a lie, he has a very good idea. Simply dying didn't free him, or else half Hydra would be in Los Angeles, and Kara would be drinking Mojitos somewhere on a beach resort. He thinks he became a real person because these people accidentally proclaimed aloud that he was. They wrote his life and then his death, and then they told everyone who'd stop and listen that Ward's bad fortune was all his fault. These interviews they gave after his death aired, repeating the he deserved his fate because he didn't want redemption, didn't see the need to seek forgiveness, as if a character on a TV show actually had personal autonomy and capacity for making decisions. 

Their word is law to him, though, and in pretending he had freedom they actually gave it to him. Fail as showrunners, fail as human being, fail as gods. Ward feels like snorting, but he must keep his poker face. He has good cards up his sleeve for the first time since his (birth) creation, and if he plays them right... He feels giddy and lightheaded and almost cannot think through the invasive hammering inside his head. He has finally identified the sound, and he now knows that he's close. Here, in this place, it's at its maximum, and he almost expects it to overcome him and prevent his play. 

"So, you're the people who created me," he smiles a perfect smile despite the bile coming up his throat, and they all nod. "Well damn, it's been quite a journey. Such a roller coaster! Like, here I am, a spy and an all around good, noble guy... And then it turns out, I am not! It was such a shock to me! Did you come up with it yourselves?"

"Of course we did." They nod, and it's a lie - he knows now that his turn hadn't been dictated by the show itself, but by a vaguely related movie. He'd thought it brilliant at the time. He'd hoped that being revealed as a double agent would open up great possibilities for his own growth - an opportunity to face down Garrett and his demons, to learn to love and trust, to find support in a makeshift family. He'd thought it very deep and felt so hopeful... Oh well, what he's about to achieve now is way better, despite the gruesome road.

"And then I was in prison, and I was really hoping to win SHIELD's good graces back, but that would have probably been too boring? Too conventional?"

"Exactly", they nod again, happy to have such an understanding audience.

"So instead of being allowed to repent and help the team, I became this bastard who wanted the heroes to pay for betraying one of their own..."

"Yes."

"And I decided to turn Hydra after all, because obviously I had to be the all around bad guy. That is, until I found this higher mystical power I could truly believe in."

"Exactly, yes," they are a little tired of the questioning, but they are still indulging him. Ward nods sagely and looks up at his creators with great pathos. They seem like they love pathos, for all they aren't very good in creating it.

"And after many dastardly deeds I finally died, and I was free."

"Yes."

The trap closes effortlessly. 

And I was free. 

Yes - spoken by his gods.

Ward doesn't need to check to know the plan has worked. The sudden silence it testimony enough. Miraculous, delightful, soft, calming silence. He'd thought it was a typewriter of sorts inside his head, and he had been almost right. It had been a keyboard. Not just any keyboard either - the one of the computer in this exact writing room. He sees it from the corner of his eye, and doesn't need to check whether it sounds identical to the clicks inside his head. He simply knows. He's heard it rewriting his motivations long enough.

He'd thought that he had achieved clarity before, but it's nothing compared to the easiness with which he understands himself now. Gone are the unexplainable urges to burn things and even people to the ground, to rain badly planned vengeances on anyone who dares to hurt him. He can recognize any and all personality overwrites that he had suffered from the beginning. Watching the series had helped him to remember himself as he had once been - eager to protect others and sacrifice himself at every turn -, but the sadistic, lashing personality had been his latest, and despite everything it had been hard to fight. 

The looks they give him become worried, and Ward imagines that they are catching up to what is truly going on. He wonders if these people will ever understand how much they lucked out. They have delighted in making him hurt people for over half a year, in making him enjoy it... Had he not succeeded in breaking free from their toxic characterization, they'd have unleashed an almost bulletproof, revengeful, sadistic psychopath onto themselves. Who knows what over the top vengeance plans that version of himself would come up with. 

Not that he doesn't want justice - or even revenge - as he's now. He does, he's just so much smarter about it when he can decide his own actions. And he sees the overall picture, the truly big one, now. 

One of the images he's been stuck with in the last days had been of Skye, celebrating with everyone while he was welcoming his death. He hadn't felt envious or angry as he saw her doing that. In fact, for the first time since coming back to life, he'd felt grateful. No matter how fucked up his life and his death had been, he's now got the opportunity to figure out his own identity, to peek behind the curtain. Skye might be hailed as a hero, but she is slated to live out her puppet-like existence in the void. To do as she's told, kill whoever she's instructed, kiss and bed whoever she's forced to... And then she'll die as the series ends. Which, according to every critic, will happen very soon.

Idem for Fitz. Simmons. Coulson. Ward used to resent him (dying by his mechanic hand had hurt a real lot) but he's over it now. Free from his artificial feud with the man, he realizes that Coulson is just another powerless character in the big game, and Ward is done fighting his fellow puppets. He's now all about puppeteers.

He takes two steps toward the computer. The keyboard doesn't control him directly anymore, and yet he can feel the potential emanating from it. He knows exactly what kind of power stories have, and how easy it's to abuse said power. He presses a random key, watches the screen come to life. Sure enough, one of the future scripts is waiting there.

"What are you doing?" One of his ex-masters says. They aren't totally oblivious, and they're clearly starting to fear him now.

"Fixing this," he answers vaguely. The world of the show is huge and complex, and he's not exactly a writer. He's positive that he can do his, though. Keep everyone alive and work on freeing whoever can. Grant all these he can't bring over a deserved happy ending. 

"What makes you think that you can do that?"

I'm the best since Romanoff, he thinks cheekily. I've come this far, I'll finish what I started, he remembers saying. I'm trying to protect (you) her, echo through his mind. All these are things they made him say, though, and he bites his tongue and doesn't utter any of these words. 

Ward fixes the fallen, pitiful gods with a long stare. He knows that in a way, they are completely right. He's a professional spy, male, 32 years old, and it'll be difficult for him to get into the shoes of a young Inhuman hacker, a SHIELD director going through an unending midlife crisis, an Asian female PTSD-ridden martial artist, a pair of cute genius scientists. He stands by his initial assessment anyway.

"The prerequisite to being a good writer isn't to create breathtaking twists and turns. It's to respect the characters that you create. Anyone with empathy can do it."

He grins. It might be a small step and hopefully the first one of many, but he cannot wait to have someone - any character, really - ask a certain hacker if she herself, independently from third parties' agendas, actually prefers being called Daisy, or Skye.

**Author's Note:**

> Most people will be able to recognize the multiple meta facts used in the writing of this fic. If you don't - just know that they're all true, from the kind of interviews given by writers about the character to the treatment his actor receives on the show.

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [fic cover art: Last Action (anti) Hero](https://archiveofourown.org/works/5883763) by [AstridV](https://archiveofourown.org/users/AstridV/pseuds/AstridV)




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